Writing Together and Planning Projects

A guide to MarkSchrift's live sessions, projects, the Agenda and your week.

• Writing together
• Planning projects
• Planning your week
• MarkSchrift Collab

Writing together

Open a note, start a live session, and send the link. Everyone you invite edits the same note at the same time and sees each other's cursors. The note stays yours: it is saved in your own notes as you go, and the people you invite work in a copy that lives only as long as the session.

Start a session

Choose how long the invite links should work, up to two weeks, and the name others will see beside your cursor. The invite link is copied for you. Send it by message or email.

Two kinds of link

• Invite link: the people who open it can read and edit.
• View-only link: they read along live but can't change anything. Good for a class, an audience or a meeting room screen.

Either link opens in any web browser, on any computer or phone, with no app and no account. People who have MarkSchrift installed can open it there instead. A session holds up to 12 people editing and 50 watching.

While you're writing

• A row of names above the note shows who is in the session, each with their own colour. Tap a name to go to where that person is writing.
• Each person's cursor shows in their colour, with their name.
• If the note has a manifest (the --- block at the top), each person who edits is added to its collaborators: line, so the note remembers who worked on it.
• A task someone else checks off or changes is stamped with who did it and when.
• If a connection drops for a moment, it catches up on its own when it returns.

Ending a session

Stop Hosting (Stop Sharing on iPhone, iPad and Mac) ends it for everyone at once: the links stop working and the shared copy is deleted. Your note keeps everything that was written. A session also ends by itself when the time you chose runs out.

Private by design

Sessions are encrypted on your device before anything leaves it. The key travels only inside the link you send, so the server that passes the edits along never sees your text. Shared sessions follow a content policy, checked privately on your own device; anyone with a link can report a session. Your private notes are never checked.

Planning projects

In MarkSchrift a project is not a separate place: it's a name that ties together the notes and tasks that belong to one piece of work, wherever they're written. Everything stays ordinary text you could read in any editor.

Tasks

A task is a checklist line. Tags on the line plan it:

- [ ] Pay the venue deposit @due(Fri) @p1 +dinner
- [ ] Ask about the hall @del(Sam) @chk(Mon)
- [ ] Go over the menu with the caterer @to(Mark Schriftor)

• @due(date): when it's due. @p1, @p2, @p3: priority.
• +name: the project it belongs to.
• @del(Name): you're waiting on someone. @chk(date): when to check in with them.
• @to(Name): something to bring up with someone.

Lines indented under a task are its notes, and they travel with it.

A note that belongs to a project

Instead of tagging every task, give the note a manifest at the very top and every task in it joins the project:

---
project: dinner
---

A task's own +tag wins over the note's, so a task in a meeting note can point to whichever project it really belongs to.

The project's home note

Add projectHome: yes under the project: line of one note and it becomes the project's home. Open it and MarkSchrift shows, beside it, every note in the project, every open task (tap one to go to it), what's been completed, and the people the tasks name.

Projects inside a project

A slash makes a smaller project inside a bigger one: a trip might have trip/car for getting the car ready and trip/event for a dinner once you arrive. Each can have its own home note showing just its own work, while the trip's home note gathers everything, sub-projects included. In the Agenda's Project view each one gets its own section.

The Agenda

The Agenda gathers every open task from every note into one list: Refine, Past Due, Due Today, Check-ins, Discussion, Up Next and Completed. Switch how it's grouped:

• Status: what needs doing first.
• Project: one section per project.
• Person: who you're waiting on, and who you need to talk to.
• Week: this week, next week and later, by date.

Tick a task right in the Agenda to check it off. Tap its note's name to jump to the task.

Working on a project together

Any note in a project can be hosted as a live session like any other note. On iPhone, iPad and Mac you can also put a whole project on the web from its home note (••• ▸ Share ▸ Host Project on the Web…): the people you give its code or link can open and edit every note in the project from a browser.

Planning your week

Each week has its own note, with a section for each day. Plan ▸ This Week opens it and lands on today; Previous Week and Next Week step through the weeks.

• Weekly Review walks through last week's open tasks: move each one to a day this week, to later, or carry it over, and check off what's done. Last week's note keeps a record of where each task went.
• File Completed moves finished tasks into each note's Completed section, so open work stays on top and the history stays in the note.
• A task scheduled into the week from a project leaves a marker behind in the project note, so the project always shows what's been planned and what's finished.

MarkSchrift Collab

Joining a session is always free, for everyone, with or without MarkSchrift. Hosting a session, or putting a project on the web, needs a MarkSchrift Collab subscription: $9.99 a year, with the first 14 days free, and you can cancel any time.

On iPhone, iPad and Mac, subscribe in the app. You can also subscribe in MarkSchrift for the web, at markschrift.app, signed in with your Google account; that subscription works in the Android app too, signed in with the same account.